More frustrating and gratuitous cafe stops on the Intercity bus up to Nelson. It was a grim day with teeming rain and I was glad I'd decided to go up the coast in one go as there didn't seem to be much to see. We stopped at the Pancake Rocks (apparently "one of Nature's enigmas") and I ran into Rachel who I'd met in Te Anau at the train station in Greymouth. She'd spent an unnerving night there in a creepy hostel with loud ticking clocks. We picked up passengers at pre-arranged points by the side of the road, which was all a bit weird, and there were quite a few boarders who'd been home for the weekend and were being dropped off at their schools.

Nelson was a pleasant town built on a river, with gardens, a wharf and a cathedral. There was a hill overlooking the area which claimed to be the centre of New Zealand. The hostel I was staying in was an old rambling villa set up above the street. It was a strange, interesting place with an odd collection of characters, many of whom were staying long-term and either working as cleaners or at the fish factory. I met Maike, who was at the hostel in Christchurch, and we spent a couple of hours in the hot tub with Nicolas, our roommate, Megan, and a bottle of fine red wine. Megan was a very loud, very insecure American girl who had been working as a receptionist at the hostel for a few months. She had a beef with a girl who'd been staying there for ages and never did her washing up. Megan, clearly a woman of action, had started putting the dirty plates in her bed.

I took a bus for two hours up to Marahua, then a water taxi up into Abel Tasman National Park. The coastal track through the park is one of New Zealand's Great Walks and takes three days to complete, but I was only doing a section of it on a day walk. The water taxi was pulled on a trailer behind a tractor through the streets to the ramp with us sitting on it, feeling a bit foolish. We sailed along the coast past the Split Apple Rock and Adele and d'Urville Islands and various bays. There was an elderly chap who looked like Gandalf in the boat, with a long wispy beard that blew around in the breeze and woollen trousers, and we dropped him off at an empty sandy cove. The rest of us clambered off the boat at Torrent Bay, clutching our boots and gasping at the numbingly cold water as we waded to shore. It was a sunny, clear day and the walk was beautiful, with lots of streams, waterfalls and rainforest interspersed with stunning views. I ate my packed lunch on a quiet beach and was joined by a couple of other people from the boat. We had to climb back to the track up a steep slope and it took us longer than expected to get back to the bus stop but we made it just in time.